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<title>Dress to Kill by LookingForDroids</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26451151">Dress to Kill</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids'>LookingForDroids</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hiveswap</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Hemospectrum, Identity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:28:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>454</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26451151</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Polypa prepares for a mission.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dress to Kill</h2></a>
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    <p>The question, as always, is whether to go low or high.</p><p>Polypa sorts through harlequin masks and indigo suits, bronze-bordered work shirts and diaphanous violet scarves, dissatisfied with all of them. This target’s parties are prone to bloodshed, which means the staff will be ignored but in danger. That doesn’t worry her, but it might derail the mission. He’s paranoid about rivals, though, so if she goes too far in the other direction, he won’t let her get close.</p><p>Cerulean, she decides. High enough to be invited, low enough to be dismissed. Her claws close on a delicate, lace-trimmed dress, deep blue and black, cool as water against her skin when she pulls it on. The sign that sits just beneath the neckline is a looping curl that ends in a jagged arrow; maybe some of them will wonder why they’ve never seen it before, but none of them will <i>ask</i>, and even if they do, the question will be the wrong one.</p><p>It’s stupid, really. Blood and sign are the first things anyone looks to, the things that stick hardest in the memory, and nobody ever considers just how easy it is to dress off-spectrum. Polypa’s got her theories on why, which would be enough to get her slated for culling even if the up-spectrum part of her job wasn’t, but they all come down to this: once you admit that no one <i>needs</i> to be what they seem, you start to wonder how many times you were wrong before, and what you were wrong about. </p><p>Polypa’s done some work before for trolls who want to change all that, but as far as she cares, things can stay the way they are forever. It suits her purposes when all her marks are afraid to admit that their foundations are built on fog. Escape is so much easier when a change of sweatshirt and a dash of lipstick in the right color is all it takes to be nobility slumming it, or a rustblood fangirl on the lookout for her idol, or a kid who likes East Alternian art and too much salt on her exploded kernels, and still cares about things like pity and hate.</p><p>She dons the finishing touches – jacket, jewelry, false horns, a light layer of grey and a dusting of blue across her face – and she is the troll in the mirror, elegant and illusory, hatched today with her whole history intact. This girl, she decides, will be laughing flirtation over cruelty, with a cool, dense core of loneliness hidden deeper, and she’ll fit right in with all the rest. By the end of the night, Polypa will kill her too, and regret it no more than she ever has.</p>
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